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August 18, 2011

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The White House has, as a matter of policy, avoiding calling for regime change -- even in Libya -- amid the many moving pieces of the Arab Spring, but makes an exception today:

The future of Syria must be determined by its people, but President Bashar al-Assad is standing in their way. His calls for dialogue and reform have rung hollow while he is imprisoning, torturing, and slaughtering his own people. We have consistently said that President Assad must lead a democratic transition or get out of the way. He has not led. For the sake of the Syrian people, the time has come for President Assad to step aside.

The United States cannot and will not impose this transition upon Syria. It is up to the Syrian people to choose their own leaders, and we have heard their strong desire that there not be foreign intervention in their movement. What the United States will support is an effort to bring about a Syria that is democratic, just, and inclusive for all Syrians. We will support this outcome by pressuring President Assad to get out of the way of this transition, and standing up for the universal rights of the Syrian people along with others in the international community.

Obama announced new sanctions as well.

The Syria meltdown has also badly undermined what many in the Administration and out viewed as the promising "Syrian track" to negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, on the theory that a resolution of Israeli disputes with Syria could be part of a larger package. Quite a lot of diplomatic energy and positioning went into that theory, one of the many, many reasons the "peace process" is nowhere.

Imagine if our biggest creditor - China - tried to impose a regime change because with Obama in power they are likely to lose their money.
Calling for "regime change" in Egypt and now Syria as well as Libya has so far has zero upside but severe down side. The region is destablized to the point that the citizens look to loud mouths on facebook and twitter to tell them what to do next. We all can guess how that will work out. There is no "will of the people". There is onl flash mobs fueled by social media and the possibility of having their face immortalized on You Tube. Time for the US to butt out unless it has better options than the regimes it wants to oust. People like Karzai are not the answer.